yikes, i didn't realize that it had been over 2 weeks since the last post!

the quick update - i was out of town for the entire week of thanksgiving so no progress was made on the floor that week. and then i was super busy with work last week, so again, no floor progress. but now we're back and ready to continue working! i'm very much ready for this project to be done.

once we realized just how long the floor installation was going to take, i contacted the place where we had rented the floor stapler. i was able to work a deal with them and we are now the proud owners of the floor stapler. it really ended up being much more cost effective to not have to worry about the rental fees, plus now we have the flexibilty to work on the floors on our own schedule. we got a discounted price on the stapler because it was "used" and they applied our rental fee towards the purchase price. it ended up working out nicely.

i do have some progress photos to share:

over the weekend we worked on re-installing the mantel. we had installed a new piece of drywall above the mantel way back when because we had to cover up the crumbling plaster after we removed the mirror that was above the fireplace. since we had the edge of the drywall sitting on top of the mantel, we had to shorten the mantel in order to make it fit under the drywall. this seemed easier than having to do any more drywall work. the new tile floor is slightly higher than the old floor. also, please ignore mike's hair in the photo above, and don't make fun of my smiley face blanket... blue and yellow were our high school colors and this was my football game blanket. :-)

we did some minor floor leveling and installed the rest of the osb:



do you like the missing piece of baseboard in the corner of the entry? this was hidden behind furniture when we bought the house so we didn't know that it was missing until closing. actually, the entire baseboard along that wall and below the stained glass window is in horrible shape and needs to be repaired/replaced.

there is still some (hopefully) minimal floor prep left to be done with the kitchen floor and the half bath, but we are now ready to move forward with the floor installation.

we also found time in our busy weekend to buy our christmas tree (i insist on a real tree), do some christmas decorating, and get a good start on our christmas shopping.



please observe the carefully cropped photo of the tree. yes, i decorated around all of the random furniture, boxes of hardwood floor, and large assortment of tools. i will try to post a few more pictures of our decorations once some of the mess is cleared out.


have i mentioned how much i love christmas?